Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Feb 28;15(1):18.
doi: 10.1186/s12992-019-0461-2.

Tuberculosis among migrant workers in Taiwan

Chia-Wen Lu  1   2 , Yi-Hsuan Lee  3 , Yu-Hao Pan  1 , Hao-Hsiang Chang  1 , Yi-Chun Wu  4 , Wang-Huei Sheng  5 , Kuo-Chin Huang  6   7
Affiliations

Tuberculosis among migrant workers in Taiwan

Chia-Wen Lu et al. Global Health. .

Abstract

Background: Although the worldwide incidence of tuberculosis (TB) has been slowly decreasing, the migrant workers remains an important gap for regional TB control. In Taiwan, the numbers of the migrant workers from countries with high TB incidence increase significantly in past decades and the impact on public health remains unknown. This study aimed to explore the difference of TB incidence between Taiwanese and the migrant workers.

Methods: The migrant workers are obligated to receive pre-arrival, post-arrival and regular chest X-ray screening during their stay in Taiwan. We retrospectively collected these data extracted from the Alien Workers Health Database in Centers for Disease Control, Taiwan from Jan. 1, 2004 to Dec. 31, 2013. Poisson regression models were used to compare the hazard ratios of TB between Taiwanese and the migrant workers after adjusting gender and age groups.

Results: The total migrant workers in Taiwan reached 314,034 persons in 2004 and 489,134 persons in 2013, accounting for 2% of Taiwan population. The TB incidence of migrant workers was similar to Taiwanese (53-73.7 per 105 vs 45.5-76.8 per 105). Comparing with Taiwanese, the TB risk was significantly lower in male migrant workers (HR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.70-0.83, P < 0.001), but higher in female migrant workers (HR: 1.40; 95% CI: 1.35-1.46, P < 0.001). Besides, we found that the TB risk in migrant workers was 5.30-fold (95% CI: 4.83-5.83, P < 0.001) in youngest group (≤24 year-old) comparing with Taiwanese.

Conclusions: Migrant workers in Taiwan have higher TB incidence than Taiwanese in young groups, especially in females. The mainstay young laborers with latent tuberculosis infection risk is an important vulnerability for public health. Further investigation and health screening are warranted.

Keywords: Foreigner workers; Latent tuberculosis infection; Migrant workers; Tuberculosis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The design of the study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee in National Taiwan University Hospital in Taiwan (201807018W) before the study was conducted.

Consent for publication

Written informed consent was not obtained from the participant for publication because of the individual de-identified details in original row data.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Annual numbers of the migrant workers in Taiwan, 2004–2013
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Tuberculosis incidence (persons per 105) among the migrant workers, their native countries and Taiwan
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization . Global Tuberculosis Report. 2017.
    1. Chiang CY, Enarson DA, Yang SL, Suo J, Lin TP. The impact of national health insurance on the notification of tuberculosis in Taiwan. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 2002;6(11):974–979. - PubMed
    1. Cheng TM. Taiwan’s new national health insurance program: genesis and experience so far. Health Aff. 2003;22(3):61–76. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.22.3.61. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lo HY, Yang SL, Chou P, Chuang JH, Chiang CY. Completeness and timeliness of tuberculosis notification in Taiwan. BMC Public Health. 2011;11:915. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-11-915. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Center for Disease Control, Department of Health, executive yuan, Taiwan . Tuberculosis annual report. 2017.

Publication types